


like a diver out of air

by Guzmanasol



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, Post-Trade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 00:07:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guzmanasol/pseuds/Guzmanasol
Summary: Andre is, for all intents and purposes, a Carlson. A Carlson in Denver instead of D.C., but a Carlson nonetheless. The rest of the Carlsons learn to deal.





	like a diver out of air

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caixa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caixa/gifts).

> For Caixa, working from the prompt
> 
> "2(3) words: (losing) uncle André. Kid fic is okay, family members as characters are okay. Wouldn't say no to a dealing with the trade -fic from this perspective."
> 
> AKA I saw an excuse to camp out in Carly's feelings and also to explore burgeoning potential poly.

READY

Andre goes away for the summer, and Lucca is fine. John is not, Gina won’t say, and Rudy, sweet Rudy, is a baby and blessedly content.

Andre goes away for the summer, and they all knew it was coming. John loses hours trying to find a way to explain to Lucca that this summer is different. He can’t find words that make it real for him and he can’t explain to his son what he barely grasps himself. John doesn’t tell Lucca it’s different. The summer is peaceful, quieter without Andre, but it’s not new. It’s what Uncle Andre does, and Lucca doesn’t like it but he’s been through it before. Eventually he’ll change from saying he misses Uncle Andre to asking when Uncle Andre will be back, will he bring presents, will he take Lucca to hockey? 

The anticipation makes dread a heavy weight in John’s stomach. It pushes him to spend more time working out because if he does, he can pretend that he aches from training and not from trying to picture their lives with Andre in Denver. He’s selfishly glad Rudy is too young to really understand because John feels ill at the thought of two devastated sons. Gina doesn’t say if she’s relieved that only one of the boys is old enough to realize, if she’s worried about explaining things to Lucca, if she thinks of the fall and thinks of holes in their family. 

She doesn’t say anything but years together have taught him how she bites her lips when she’s nervous about a conversation or lets her tea go cold in front of her while she’s lost in unhappy thoughts. He knows that she knows his tells, whatever they are, and that Andre had been catching up to both of them. It’s something they can shove aside in the chaos of summer as they frantically try to cram in as much time with their family in Maryland as they can. There are other reminders that they can’t suppress as easily. 

He knows what it means every time she sees him grimace at the mint in the lemonade. That was a Gina-and-Andre thing. John loves Gina-and-Andre things that aren’t him, but damn does he wish they had better taste. He still drinks the lemonade though, hates the leaves in his glass less than he hates the way Gina’s face had scrunched up like she was barely holding back tears the one time he hadn’t had any and she came back from pumping to find half a pitcher left. 

It’s a paradoxically slow summer of workouts and the beach and rapid changes in his family and on his team. His sons are getting bigger every day as Gina laughs and texts furiously and John tries not to look over his shoulder every day. He knows Andre won’t be there, snapping the team endless videos of the boys shrieking at the edge of the water as John holds their small hands or lazing on a towel next to Gina’s chair as they laugh at her dramatic reading of her novel of the week. He still looks. 

He texts Andre daily, FaceTimes him often enough to memorize his summer rental in Sweden in all its professionally decorated grey-and-teal glory. Andre always picks the most hideous places to rent. It’s an unfortunate talent that Gina thinks has to be intentional (“There is no way he just accidentally found a place with both pink and pumpkin in the color scheme John, absolutely no way,” she whispered to him early on, one of the first summers when they checked in on Andre in the offseason). 

It is so close to normal for them in the summer that John can ignore the nagging dread in the back of his head. It’s summer, of course, Andre is in Sweden, of course Lucca is saying he misses him, and every year Gina spends the first few weeks cooking extra portions like she expects to hear the door slam and footsteps heading for the kitchen. They always adjust eventually. 

It doesn’t hit him until well into July, the time of year he normally gets a text from Andre about when he’ll be back in town. He won’t be driving out to Dulles to collect a jet-lagged Andre any day now. Andre won’t be picking a place for his first meal back, lengthy messages blowing up John’s phone until Andre picks the same place he always does. John won’t get to bitch him out for having shit taste as he avoids Maryland drivers with lead feet and Virginia drivers who have never heard of a turn signal, let alone used one. 

There’s no need for Gina to order a season’s worth of Swedish snacks from the only website she trusts to ship them properly, wrapped in frankly excessive amounts of bubble wrap that Lucca loves to play with. It will just be the four of them at home. When Andre reports to training camp, he’ll report to wherever the Avs practice. It makes John pause as he collects Lucca’s toys and he can feel a headache building, like he’s back in high school during the three weeks a scheduling mistakes had left him sitting in an AP Physics class he shouldn’t have been in. Nothing makes sense, not the way he knows it should, not with half started conversations lingering between Andre and Gina and John. 

Andre is traded and John could form a team, full roster and an AHL squad to boot, with all the emotions he can’t name that he’s left with. 

SET

John doesn’t know how to lose when Andre is winning. He doesn’t remember frustration and lust and sorrow tasting quite like this before. It makes him jittery after, as an obnoxious goal horn faded slowly. John and Andre played against each other and John lost. They have played against each other before and John has lost. John knows how to lose to Andre in blue and in white, but he’s unprepared to lose to Andre in red red red. Red is for winning, for jumping on each other, and screaming so loud Gina swears she hears them in the family suite. Red is for them on the same team, riding out winning streaks and slumps together. 

He breathes through it, lets himself feel the ache of knowing things had changed and that red doesn’t mean that anymore, and he gets up. Gina and the boys had hugged him tight, a huddled mass of love and arms so tight around his neck, and given him strict instructions to let Andre know they missed him and loved him and that they can’t wait to see him. John can deliver that message and remind Andre that there would be a seat at Thanksgiving for him if he wants it. He’s tempted to not acknowledge that his new teammates might want to have Andre over for a team Thanksgiving. Luca has latched onto Thanksgiving as time with Uncle Andre, and John knows his oldest son gets from him, a stubborn refusal to let go of the people he loves.

Gina is the only one awake when he comes in, careful to close the door to the garage quietly because he’s learned the painful way not to wake sleeping toddlers. House Hunters is muted and showing an exceptionally ugly home and Gina gets up from their couch with a grimace that tells him she’d been marathoning it. 

“Hey,” and then she’s giving him the sort of octopus hug that Andre had in the hallway of the Pepsi Center, and he doesn’t know what to say to her. It’s not even Halloween and this season feels as exhausting as that first season they were trying to figure out how to have hockey and each other and a life. 

“Andre sent me his flight details for Thanksgiving.” John has to chuckle a bit, muffled by Gina’s hair, but she hears him and pokes him between his ribs before continuing, “I’m glad that he’s coming home, but I am not picking him up from Dulles and I shudder to think what will happen if we make him Uber.”

“Fine, fine I’ll get him then, it’ll keep me away from the damn stuffing,” he promises her, tired but pleased. She gives him a squeeze as she chuckles at memories of Thanksgiving past, her mother judging how he made stuffing and John ready to drown himself in the gravy. It’s a relief, a reminder that he’s not the only one who cares about Andre. He sometimes worries that Gina will be hurt by… whatever he and Andre are dancing around, but then there are moments like this. As tangled and twisted as Andre makes him feel, Andre does the same to Gina, and there’s no rulebook that they have to follow for this. It’s them and their family and they’ll make it into something that works for all of them. 

GO  
November is disorienting. John led the league in points and then he couldn’t kill a penalty for love or money. Andre gets tangled up in a teammate's fight in Nashville and his left hand gets banged up enough he misses two games and pouts in the press box and in texts. Both of them stop obsessively checking each other’s press at Gina’s firm urging. As Thanksgiving creeps closer, they start finding the equilibrium that’s been eluding them. Passes connect, bruises fade, and John lets himself believe that they can make this work. Gina makes noises about taking the boys to see the mountains, maybe spend some time in St. Louis in January, before they do their normal bye week trip to Florida, depending of course. Always depending on things none of them can control. Andre promises to scout out places to play for the boys and restaurants and babysitters for Gina. John breathes easier, even as he ignores how tenuous this all feels. 

Their house is loud with family and Lucca is trying to get his cousins to play hockey when John leaves for Dulles. He’d opened a new bottle of Zinfandel and poured a glass for Gina and their parents before he’d left in hopes of preventing the sort of stress induced snappishness that comes with so many cooks in the kitchen. He doubts it will work as well as he hopes but Andre’s arrival will at least cheer up Gina. 

Andre’s flight isn’t delayed and John idly wonders how much that bit of luck is going to cost them before he pulls over to the curb. Andre is still wearing the same dark coat he loved last season, and his hair is as much of a mess as it always is after sleeping on planes. If John ignores the grey slush on the ground, it’s almost like this is their normal end of summer routine. 

“Let’s go home already, Gina is sending me food pictures and I want to eat,” Andre drags out ‘eat’ until only years of toddler babble have made it something John can understand. He laughs as he signals, like a decent fucking human, and starts the painful process of getting the fuck out of Dulles during the holidays. 

“What, are they starving you in Denver? Or do you still only have ketchup in your fridge?,’ the devil on John’s shoulder makes him ask. Andre still seems to have that early season muscle, but he’s so bundled up in sweaters and shirts that John wouldn’t be surprised if he’s several pounds lighter under all of that. 

“Fuck you, that was Latts and Willy. And this is my first family dinner in months,” Andre tells him, thumbs flying as he texts and Snaps and tweets his arrival back home. John rolls his eyes but speeds up. He’s willing to risk the ticket from the speed cameras if it means more time with all of his family in the same place. Andre is fairly quiet as they pass slow cars and John swears at Pennsylvania drivers. John can see his home screen lighting up with notifications, old group chats coming back to life. He smiles and doesn’t swear at the next out of state driver that cuts him off (Pennsylvania again, of course). Andre dozes in the passenger seat for the rest of the drive. John lets him, waits till he’s pulled into the garage and turned off the engine to reach over and shake his shoulder. 

“C’mon, we’re home.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was mostly written in D.C. and then finished near Hershey. Something something poetic cinema.
> 
> 1\. teaism is a restaurant/tea shop like two blocks from Cap One and is delicious-- if you're in the area for a cap, go for it.  
2\. Feelings are hard, carly is tough to write, andre is tougher  
3\. lemme tell you, working across the street from cap one during the summer did NOT get my creative juices flowing.  
4\. Yes I ended it that way to be very soft.  
5\. Title from Dessa's The Lamb.


End file.
